Free Balm by Viola Grace Page A

had no idea where his robes were from. “Are you with the Sector Guard?”
    “No. I am with an observational body.” He shifted and took a seat next to her. “If it hurts you, why do you do it?”
    Quinn snorted. “I wasn’t given any choice. Besides, if I don’t help them, their last thoughts on this world will be of pain. It isn’t something that I would wish on anyone.”
    “Why don’t you have a choice?”
    She looked at him in surprise. His curiosity was not something she had run across before. Most folks called her a reaper and gave her a wide berth.
    She didn’t know if it were the sympathetic tone or simply that he had asked the question, but she told him how she had ended up in her peculiar assignment.
    “I was an Enforcer sent to Wallu during the height of terrorist acts. We were guarding a disarmament team when a blast sent us flipping through the air, crushing three of the men in my unit. The captain was dead and the second in command was lying next to me, breathing more blood than air. He asked me to hold his hand, to help him keep calm while we waited for help. We both knew that he was not going to make it, and my mind reached for his and his for mine. I wanted to keep him calm, so I put that into my thoughts.
    “His features straightened, his body relaxed and a light filled his mind. I felt him go, and the moment he did, hands pulled me from him as a pair of beings lifted him and disappeared.”
    She snorted. “Everyone attributed my memory of the disappearance to shock, but I know what I saw.”
    He leaned close. “What did you see?”
    “A woman similar to a Terran, if she wasn’t actually one of us, and a Hirn. I looked it up. There is only one race that looked like that.” Quinn sighed.
    “Anyway, whatever happened at the moment that he died changed my mind. Literally. After that point, I could see who was about to die and if they wished it, I could ease them into the next world. The Citadel worked to train me and sent me out under the description of being the Balm of Death. Not a very attractive job title.”
    Her companion cocked his head. “Do you bring death?”
    She shook her head. “No. It will come on its own. I only see the end of the physical shape and let the soul free without trauma. I don’t keep the consciousness, just sooth the body, so the mind isn’t held by instinct and panic.”
    His voice was calming. “You would not have chosen it?”
    “No. I liked being an Enforcer. I liked helping the living to live.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I apologize. I didn’t introduce myself. I am Quinn Lios.”
    She extended her hand in formal greeting. His hand struck her with its familiarity. There was a scar across the silken black velvet skin. She knew that hand, but when she looked up into the depths of his hood, a scream claimed her attention.
    “Murdering bitch!”
    Quinn jumped back and put herself between the charging woman and the stranger.
    Tears tracked down the woman’s face as she lunged at Quinn with a blade. Sobs punctuated every sharp motion as the stranger tried to kill her.
    Quinn disarmed her and held her as the woman snuffled out that she had struggled to make her way to the medical centre, and she had arrived too late. Her mother had been one of those who surrendered to death that morning.
    A shudder ran through the woman. “What were her last words?”
    Quinn looked at her, “I don’t know.”
    Where the woman got the second knife, Quinn didn’t know, but she gasped. It was buried in her throat.
    “When you kill someone, you should remember it, bitch.”
    Quinn’s vision was fading, but she felt arms holding her and voices calling out. Her attacker was being questioned, and she snapped out, “She didn’t remember my mother’s last words.”
    One of the medics that Quinn had met with in the morning spoke softly. “Your mother died before she arrived. She could not have known the last words of a woman already gone.”
    A low wail thrummed